Focus: Landing the money

Irish financier Dermot Desmond took a flyer when he bought London City airport. It turned out to be one of the deals of the decade, write Joe Brennan and Dominic OConnell

Back in 1995, London’s Docklands was not quite the gleaming glass metropolis it is today.

Canary Wharf, the grandiose development at the centre of regeneration plans for the area, had only recently emerged from the financial chaos of administration.

Buildings were empty, the Jubilee line Tube was still five years away, and much of the land now covered by bars, shops and offices was a weed-filled wasteland.

Nowhere was the pain more acute than at London City airport. It had seemed a great idea in the 1980s — a small inner-city airport to serve not only the burgeoning new financial district, but also the established City powerhouses further west.

Mowlem, the construction group, built it between two disused docks, and opened it in 1987.

It was a disaster. Apart from one year when it managed to break even, the airport lost money and by 1995 had soaked up as much as